All coffee and all wine tastes the same to me, can people really tell the difference or is it mostly an upper class pantomime?
The dominant factors in the flavour of coffee comes from the preparation, both the roasting and the brewing.
Roasting reduces the acidity of the beans and draws out oils towards the outer surface. Both the acidity and oil content of the affect the flavour, with the acidity directly impacting bitterness and the oil impacting the smoothness.
The amount of total acidity contributors and oil contributors that are drawn out of the bean when brewing are a direct function of water temperature, water pressure and duration. Too low a temperature and the resulting drink is more akin to watery coffee dust. Too low a pressure and you get sort of the same results.
An ideal temperature and pressure combination, given a fixed duration (let's say 30 seconds) draws out enough of the oils to balance the acidity to get a good strength coffee (optimal bean to drink yield) that doesn't taste horrid. The acidity takes longer to draw out such that too long a duration results in a more bitter (and generally less acceptable) flavour.
That's a rough overview meant only to highlight that it certainly is possible, from both roasting and brewing, to significantly alter the flavour of coffee. I've oversimplified for brevity.
But can differently-grown beans of the same type affect flavour?
I don't grow coffee beans but I do grow tomatoes. From personal experience, the length of growing season, the amount of sunlight and the average temperature across the growing season affect the quality of the fruit. I find the same for sweetcorn, squash and many plants that grow above ground.
I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that the same factors have the capacity to impact the oil content of coffee beans if nothing else.
If growth conditions impact the oil content of the beans and the oil content of the resulting drink impacts the flavour, it seems plausible to suggest that the growth conditions can impact the flavour.
I buy a coffee advent calendar every year. Beans from small roasters, different sorts of processing, and so on. I've had coffee that tastes more akin to a fruity tea than coffee - and some that tastes much more like the coffee flavor I expect. Some of them were surprising - I didn't know coffee could taste like that.
A lot of coffee in your average stores taste somewhat similar - some much more than others - but are certainly not the same. If they didn't, folks wouldn't really have as many preferences. Roasts make a difference as do the beans origin and quality.
Compare a pour over at home with a cheap supermarket brand and a espresso at a fancy coffee shop. You can say they all deliver the same “pleasure” to you and it they are interchangeably experiences, but probably they effectively taste different. Unless you have a problem with your tasting sense.
I mean, there's two comments proposing that already, but why would that be the case only for high-ceremony drinks (coffee, wine...).
To your question. I think that’s where the economic incentives for creating and selling different variations are.
Tea also, but tea gets it from different plants.
I can taste differences in hot chocolates, btw, solid bar chocolates too. Hershey’s milk chocolate bars in the US are horrible to my taste. Any brand milk chocolate bar where I live (Brazil), tastes much better. Even the supermarket cheap ones. But more fancy chocolate bars do taste different.
In my case, a cheap chocolate bar (that is not US Hersheys) is good enough for me, so I don’t care about the fancier ones. But they do taste different.
Edit: I do believe there are marketing and status incentives to make a big deal about the difference in this high-end stuff and there is a game of “pantomime” in place as you say. Definitely is there. It just isn’t a 100% “emperor has no clothes” situation.
That’s the scenario for “high-end bottled water” in my opinion. They all taste the same and is 100% marketing
I couldn't care less for the regular brands, but usually really enjoy higher end mineral water.
Cheap house wine from an open bottle at a bar or restaurant without a wine list can taste pretty similar between bottles. These wines are typically industrial product made in large vats where the wine itself, excluding taxes and everything else, costs a fraction of a dollar. If the bottle has been open for a day, the wine loses most fruit flavours, and structurally cheap wine is pretty similar - not very tannic (it's not usually a crowd pleaser), probably has added sugar.
I can trivially tell these apart, and I did not have to "study" any of that.
From other comments it sounds like doing the same for wine takes years of practice, which is obviously only accessible to the leisure class.
Couldn't tell you a Grenache versus Merlot because I haven't reached whatever baseline of recognition is required.
That's been a very slow 20 year journey. I'm not detecting hints of blueberry or oak, that feels like pantomime still.
Then proceeds to speak in completely alien language, thank you for proving my point :)
I am saying learning such language takes years of practice, and such a hobby is only available to (relatively) few.
Grenache - I tyically drink Spanish Garnacha - has a crunchy berry profile in a young early drinking wine, but can get more interesting in pricier examples from Priorat etc.
Grenache + Syrah (aka Shiraz) + Mourvèdre (GSM) is the southern Rhone blend, and is typically very high alcohol and quite opulent. I'm not much of a fan though.
Mourvedre is fantastic stuff when done well. Mourvedre reminds me of Carignan, both make savoury / meaty wines. Domaine Tempier Bandol is a Mourvèdre-dominant blend and is absolutely delicious, my favourite example of it.
Oak is a big part of really good wine. American oak, French oak and unoaked all produce very different wines. Typical Rioja has heavy American oak flavours, while e.g. red Burgundy typically has pronounced French oak.
There is a very limited number of things an individual can get deeply into.
Some of it is just undrinkable and makes me gag; horrible stuff and other coffee is enjoyable to drink.
That said coffee afficionades do go overboard with their fussiness. A good coffee is good coffee.
If you can't tell which is which in those cases then you might legitimately have a problem with your sense of taste.
It can be quite a subtle difference, and part of the flavor might also come from the way they process the coffee before it gets roasted (washing the beans, letting them sit in the fruit a little longer, etc.)
But I am sure many people can taste the difference between a costa rican and an ethiopian coffee, as long as it's not roasted to charcoal level. That might influence why people ask this question. A lot of coffee people drink is roasted so dark that there's probably no big difference anymore. Additionally it's often blended. I guess it's how you guarantee a consistent flavor (and bottom line).
There's a lot that goes into the flavor of coffee. The beans themselves of course. Brewing technique has a big influence as well. But also growing conditions (altitude, soil composition, rain/sun mix, etc.), processing (wet vs dry process, fermentation time, etc.), handling and shipping (dry or moist conditions), and probably more I don't know about.
I strongly prefer wet-processed beans (mostly south American varieties) over dry-processed beans (mostly African varieties are processed this way). I haven't tried honey-processed yet.
Green beans stay "fresh" for a really long time, but once roasted beans become stale quickly. I can taste the difference between my roasts a day or two after roasting vs days or weeks later.
The biggest problem I have when trying to run blind taste tests is that different beans behave so differently that it's hard for me, with my low level of skill, to prepare them the same way. I can pack a basket exactly the same with a coffee of roughly the same roast put through the exact same grinder setting and then extract them for the same length of time, but one coffee will consistently come out underextracted for some unknown bean-related reason. In that case you'd just pick up the difference in preparation rather than the flavour of the beans themselves.
I roast coffee at a… semi professional level, and I would say that roasting can only make a coffee worse, it cannot be additive. You only bring out the flavors of the origin beans, and if you do it wrong they will taste bad. You can’t make certain coffee taste like fruit, for instance. It just doesn’t exist in the origin coffee.
I am currently drinking three different coffees, and they have three wildly different flavors. One has a very low body, tea like, and earthy flavors. One has a chocolatey cocoa flavor, and one tastes like syrupy rich body with ripe cherry. It’s absolutely unmistakable.